7 This reference to the Daily Gazette was to the Daily Telegraph in the original manuscript, the agony columns of which Holmes referred to in “The Six Napoleons.” Watson apparently determined, for reasons unknown, to change the name of the actual newspaper; he slipped up and used the real name in the manuscript, only to correct his slip-up later.
8 The word “that” appears in the Strand Magazine and American texts; it has been amended to “there” in the English first edition of His Last Bow.
9 For some reason, the word “lawyer” appears here in the manuscript in place of “lodger.” Watson may have had legal problems on his mind at the time of writing up his notes, presumably in late 1910 or early 1911. By that time, Watson’s writings had been widely published and pirated (in America especially), and Watson must have had frequent need to consult his solicitors.
10 This sentence and the previous sentence have been added to the manuscript.
11 The phrase is “a beautiful woman” in the manuscript.
12 He has apparently already done so, unless the attack on Mr. Warren was mere hooliganism.
13 The manuscript reads nineteen, which under no circumstances (see the discussion of the letter “K” in “The Secret Message,” page 1297) could be correct. Watson apparently checked the results against his notes later.
14 See “The Secret Message,” page 1299, for a discussion of the cipher.
15 In the manuscript, this question was followed by the line, “Scribbling a note, he rang for Mrs. Warren and directed her to drive with it instantly to Scotland Yard.” Apparently Watson subsequently recollected the true events and corrected the manuscript. Spencer Kennedy notes that if in fact Mrs. Warren had delivered the note, Holmes and Watson would not have met the Pinkerton agent, and it is probable that Watson’s realisation of this spurred his memory.
16 See also “The Empty House,” in which Holmes misquotes in a slightly different manner Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3.
17 The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded by Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884), a Scotsman who emigrated to Illinois in 1842. He settled in West Dundee, near Chicago, and opened up a cooper’s shop there. An ardent abolitionist, Pinkerton allowed his shop to serve as one of the many stations on the Underground Railroad.
While chopping wood one day on an uninhabited island in Fox River, Pinkerton stumbled upon evidence that led to the arrest and capture of a gang of counterfeiters. His pivotal role in bringing down the gang resulted in his being named deputy sheriff of Kane County in 1846, then the first city detective of Chicago’s police force. But Pinkerton quickly saw that he would never make his fortune as a cop. In 1850, he left the Chicago force to start his own private detective agency, the first of its kind in Chicago and one of only a handful in the country.
Pinkerton National Detective Agency specialised in train robberies and achieved many spectacular successes, including no less than the thwarting of an 1861 assassination attempt on President-elect Lincoln in Baltimore. During the Civil War, Pinkerton worked for the Union side, heading an organisation that gathered intelligence on Confederate activity. After the war, detectives from the Pinkerton Agency infiltrated and broke up the Molly Maguires, an Irish-American secret society that controlled Pennyslvania’s coal-mining industry (events central to The Valley of Fear). The sign above the door of the agency featured the motto “We Never Sleep” accompanying an illustration of an eye, an indelible image that gave rise to the term “private eye.” Among the sixteen books attributed to Pinkerton (as part of “Allan Pinkerton’s Detective Stories”) are The Molly Maguires and the Detectives (1877), viewed by many historians now as a highly biased work on the labour dispute, and Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches (1879).
It is unlikely that Pinkerton himself and Holmes ever met, although some scholars posit a trip to America by Holmes prior to the 1881 events of A Study in Scarlet. While Holmes may have been intrigued by the idea of establishing an “agency” (a term he himself uses in “The Sussex Vampire”), he would likely have been appalled at Pinkerton’s lack of education in the “science of detection,” which Holmes essentially invented.
Many chronologists place the events of “The Red Circle” in 1902, at which point Pinkerton’s sons, Robert and William, would have been in charge, having taken over the agency upon Pinkerton’s death in 1882. Clearly, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was eminently qualified to investigate the events at hand. But who, exactly, is the Pinkerton client in this case?
18 “The mystery, on true Sherlockian principles, is that there are no caves on Long Island,” writes Christopher Morley, the quintessential New Yorker, in “Was Sherlock Holmes an American?” W. E. Edwards suggests that the word was “cove,” noting that Glen Cove is a landmark for the golfer and the starch-manufacturer. David H. Galerstein, in “A Solution to the Long Island Cave Mystery,” proposes a man-made cave on the north shore of Long Island.
Other scholars challenge the assumption that Long Island, NY, was meant: Long Island, Tennessee, and Long Island, Alabama, are suggested. D. Martin Dakin proposes that Cave (spelled with a capital) was the name of the criminal or victim involved. William Ulrich makes the interesting suggestion that the “Cave” referred to was a term used to describe a cell of the Bohemian Brethren, a secret society, located on Long Island.
19 In the manuscript, Holmes responds, “What, the Black Hand Captain?” Evidently Watson (perhaps fearing reprisal) determined at this point to conceal the identity of the organisation of which Gorgiano was a member and changed the title of the manuscript.
20 “There has never been anything in the world absolutely like Notting Hill,” wrote G. K. Chesterton in The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904). “There will never be anything quite like it to the crack of doom.” Formerly open countryside that was built up with houses, villas, and shops, Notting Hill was an area “at once urban and suburban,” in the words of historian Peter Ackroyd, cyclically cursed with periods of rejuvenation and decline. Ackroyd quotes an 1860s issue of Building News in describing the beleaguered neighbourhood as “a graveyard of buried hopes . . . naked carcasses, crumbling decorations, fractured walls, slimy cement. All who touch them lose heart and money by the venture.” In a further display of its feast-or-famine history, the neighbourhood, the setting for the fluffy eponymous romantic comedy film Notting Hill (1999), now epitomises what one long-time resident, British filmmaker Stephen Frears, in a recent Los Angeles Times interview, calls “trendy-spendy” London, with shops selling $300 eyeglasses and cafes serving spaghettini with caramelized squid.
21 The concept that a British citizen should not be compelled to incriminate him- or herself had existed since the mid-seventeenth century, when it was written into British common law. At that time, both interrogation and the trial process were handled by the courts; with the introduction of the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, the task of interrogation was transferred from the magistrates to the police. Yet official policy on the rules of police interrogation remained somewhat muddled until 1912, when passage of the Judges’ Rules established the administrative guideline (but not concrete law) that, prior to questioning a suspect, a police officer had to inform him or her of the right to remain silent.
Even though informing a suspect of these rights may not have become standard procedure until 1912, the London police did attempt to adhere to an unofficial protocol in the years before. Eight years prior to the passage of the Judges’ Rules, Lord Brampton, in an “Address to the Police on their Duties,” reproduced in the Police Code of 1904, carefully delineated between the process of investigation and that of interrogation. He explained that when one was attempting to discover the perpetrator of a crime, asking questions of any person who might have had relevant information was acceptable. The rules changed, however, at the moment arrest was imminent. Lord Brampton wrote that when “a Constable has a warrant to arrest, or is about to arrest a person on his own authority, or has a person in custody for a crime, it is
wrong to question such person touching the crime of which he is accused. . . . On arresting a man a Constable ought simply to read his warrant, or tell the accused the nature of the charge upon which he is arrested, leaving it to the person so arrested to say anything or nothing as he pleases. . . . [H]e ought not, by anything he says or does, to invite or encourage an accused person to make any statement, without first cautioning him that he is not bound to say anything tending to criminate himself, and that anything he says may be used against him.”
Although Signora Lucca apparently was not herself a suspect (but see note 23, below), Holmes here was apparently thinking of the general rule of British law that a spouse might not be compelled to testify against his or her spouse.
22 The Carbonari (Italian for “Charcoal Burners”) were members of a secret political society that was active in early nineteenth-century southern Italy and may have originated with the Freemasonry. These dissidents first began agitating for political freedom during the reign of Gioacchino Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law and the king of Naples (1808–1815). In general, while the Carbonari tended to advocate Italian unification and some form of constitutional and representative government, a more precise agenda was never defined.
As with the Freemasonry and other secret societies, the Carbonari had their own ritual language, gestures, initiation ceremony, and hierarchy (in this case, made up of “apprentices” and “masters”). Their revolutionary fervour spread from Naples to like-minded areas such as Piedmont, the Papal States, Bologna, Parma, and Modena; and to other countries, including Spain and France. In 1831, the nationalist Risorgimento movement was formed and eventually subsumed most of the Carbonari.
Violent uprisings and assassination attempts characterised the Carbonari movement, but still, the political aims of the group seem at odds with the “dreadful” terrorist society Signora Lucca describes here. This incongruence may be explained by the fact that in the manuscript, Gennaro is linked to “the famous Camorra” rather than to the Carbonari. The Camorra remained in existence through the end of the nineteenth century and had an agenda that was more criminal than political (see “The Six Napoleons,” note 30, for a fuller description), and therefore it is likely that Genarro was in fact ensnared by the Camorra rather than the Carbonari. Watson, fearing repercussions for his portrayal of Genarro’s terrifying countryman, must have thought better of his initial candour and altered the reference to a Neapolitan society far less likely to seek retribution.
23 Daniel Griffin concludes that Emilia lied about who was pursuing whom, that she had run off with Gorgiano and that Gennaro Lucca pursued them. John Hall, in Sidelights on Holmes, poses much the same theory, except that in his version, Lucca killed his wife, disguised himself as a woman, killed Gorgiano, and then emerged as “Signora” Lucca, to test the waters as to his own safety.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS1
Regarded as one of the finest mystery stories in the annals of detection, both for its innovative clues and for its unexpected villain, “The Bruce-Partington Plans” is only the second case in which Sherlock’s brother Mycroft plays an active rôle (the other is “The Greek Interpreter”). Here, Sherlock reveals to Watson that his brother is not just an auditor working for the British government, as he told him in “The Greek Interpreter”; occasionally his brother is the British government. At the core of the story is an important government secret: the plans for the “Bruce-Partington” submarine, which Mycroft predicts will make naval warfare impossible. Submarines fascinated Conan Doyle, who wrote a story entitled “Danger!” in 1914, warning of the perils of submarine warfare before they were widely appreciated. Scholars ponder why the British failed to develop the “Bruce-Partington,” which could have played a significant rôle in the Great War. There is also much argument about Watson’s description of the railways of London and puzzlement over the strange security procedures of the Admiralty.
IN THE THIRD week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London. From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby—the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes, my comrade’s impatient and active nature could endure this drab existence no longer. He paced restlessly about our sitting-room in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture, and chafing against inaction.
“Nothing of interest in the paper, Watson?” he said.
I was aware that by anything of interest, Holmes meant anything of criminal interest. There was the news of a revolution, of a possible war, and of an impending change of Government;2 but these did not come within the horizon of my companion. I could see nothing recorded in the shape of crime which was not commonplace and futile. Holmes groaned and resumed his restless meanderings.
“The London criminal is certainly a dull fellow,” said he, in the querulous voice of the sportsman whose game has failed him. “Look out of this window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then blend once more into the cloud-bank. The thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.”
“There have,” said I, “been numerous petty thefts.”
Holmes snorted his contempt.
“This great and sombre stage is set for something more worthy than that,” said he. “It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”
“It is, indeed!” said I, heartily.
“Suppose that I were Brooks or Woodhouse, or any of the fifty men who have good reason for taking my life, how long could I survive against my own pursuit? A summons, a bogus appointment, and all would be over. It is well they don’t have days of fog in the Latin countries—the countries of assassination. By Jove! Here comes something at last to break our dead monotony.”
It was the maid with a telegram. Holmes tore it open and burst out laughing.
“Well, well! What next?” said he. “Brother Mycroft is coming round.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car3 coming down a country lane. Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall4—that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here.5 What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?”
“Does he not explain?”
Holmes handed me his brother’s telegram.
Must see you over Cadogan West. Coming at once.
MYCROFT.
“Cadogan West? I have heard the name.”
“It recalls nothing to my mind. But that Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit. By the way, do you know what Mycroft is?”
I had some vague recollection of an explanation at the time of the Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.
“You told me that he had some small office under the British Government.”
Holmes chuckled.
“I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that he is under the British Government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British Government.”
“My dear Holmes!”
“I thought I might surprise you. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable man in the country.”
“But how?”
“Well, his position is unique. He has made it for himself. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the
tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We well suppose that a Minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question;6 he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed, and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems. But Jupiter is descending to-day. What on earth can it mean? Who is Cadogan West, and what is he to Mycroft?”
“I have it,” I cried, and plunged among the litter of papers upon the sofa. “Yes, yes, here he is, sure enough! Cadogan West was the young man who was found dead on the Underground on Tuesday morning.”
Holmes sat up at attention, his pipe half-way to his lips.
“This must be serious, Watson. A death which has caused my brother to alter his habits can be no ordinary one. What in the world can he have to do with it? The case was featureless as I remember it. The young man had apparently fallen out of the train and killed himself. He had not been robbed, and there was no particular reason to suspect violence. Is that not so?”
“There has been an inquest,” said I, “and a good many fresh facts have come out. Looked at more closely, I should certainly say that it was a curious case.”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books) Page 59